There is currently considerable commercial and scientific interest in the production of nanopowders. A variety of nanopowder materials including carbon (diamond, diamond-like carbon, fullerenes, graphitic carbon), other elemental materials (metals, semiconductors), non-oxide ceramics, metal oxides, organics, polymers, and composites can be produced by numerous methods. Typically, many parameters are optimized for the synthesis of any particular nano-particle and each sample for a particular set of parameters in an experiment is collected individually for characterization. This process is expensive and time consuming.
One approach to speed up materials development has been the generation of large collections (libraries) of molecules and the systematic screening of those collections for molecules having a desired property. Using this approach, methods have been developed for the synthesis and screening of large libraries (up to 1014 molecules) of biomolecules, e.g., peptides, oligonucleotides, and the like. Biomolecules have proven amenable for the production large libraries because they are readily synthesized in a stepwise manner using monomeric precursors.
The development of libraries of inorganic materials, particularly libraries that vary in a systematic manner with respect to material properties has proven considerably more problematic. Typically conventional chemical synthetic methods have been used to produce each material and then the materials have been combined to form a combinatorial library.
The development of improved combinatorial synthesis and library formation methods it will dramatically accelerate the development and application of functional inorganic materials.